While planning a wedding can be exhilarating, it’s also a complicated and exhausting process. If a bride isn’t careful, she can be overwhelmed by all the details and miss the big picture. Your wedding day should be the happiest day of your life, not a blur of micromanaging and fretting. It’s in the refusal to relinquish control and the insistence on perfection that a Bridezilla is born; don’t let that happen to you. To make sure your wedding day is everything you want it to be, here are some resolutions for a stress-free bride.
Resolve to Delegate
Your maid of honor, your parents, your in-laws and friends are all there for a purpose: to help make sure everything goes smoothly on the day. Use the resources that you have—don’t be afraid to give up a little control in exchange for not having to run everything. Your maid of honor should be the one standing in the gap to make sure you’re not bothered with trivialities while you prepare: let her do her job. If the flowers are late, or the caterer is double-booked, or the photographer needs extra batteries, if you’re properly delegating you won’t know about the problems until they’re solved. Or, preferably, you won’t hear about it at all if you follow through with this resolution.
Resolve to Embrace Imperfection
Even if the aisle runner is off-center or the flower girl wets her pants, your wedding will be a beautiful occasion that creates lasting memories. No wedding outside of a romance novel has ever been perfect. Those little imperfections will be the things you and your friends laugh about years from now. If a bridesmaid drops her bouquet or the officiant mispronounces your name, celebrate: a few little things going wrong can’t wreck the whole enterprise or change how happy you are unless you let them.
Resolve to Stay Positive
The only tears on your wedding day should be happy tears. Focus on the meaning of what you’re doing, not the stress. If you’ve resolved to delegate and embraced imperfection, there’s no need to dwell on worrying about what might go wrong, or stressing the little wrinkles that arise throughout the day.
Resolve to Be Comfortable
Making sure your maid of honor packs a pair of wearable shoes for the reception is one of the best resolutions you can make. Forgo the giant princess dress for your summer wedding. Embrace hydration and sunscreen for an outdoor wedding. Opt for simpler makeup and hair instead of something that will take hours to do and require constant maintenance. When you stand at the altar, you don’t want to be thinking about how tight your bodice is or how sweaty your knees are; you want to be happy and completely in the moment.
Resolve to Be in the Moment
This is the big one. The only unfixable thing that can go wrong at a wedding is if preoccupation with the details takes you out of the momentous event that is taking place. Once you’ve found your positive place of peace, cherish every moment, from getting ready with the bridesmaids to hopping in your limo after the reception. This is your day. Make it one that you can remember forever.
As you plan your wedding, make sure you keep in mind these resolutions to make the day the best it can be. Delegate all the preparation you can, let those little imperfections go, allow yourself to be pampered, and keep your mind open to take it all in. With a little bit of planning and a lot of deep breaths, you can let go of the stress to have a fantastic and happy wedding day.
